Direct Marketers Not Getting Direct Marketing

Direct Marketers Not Getting Direct Marketing

There's a very good comment on my yesterday's article on marketers not getting RSS marketing at the Jeff Barr blog:

"problem with rod?s argument. the direct marketing world didn?t adopt its own lessons. at least RSS is permission based."
Comment by james governor

James, as I responded on Jeff's blog, there are several answers to your comment:

1. Smart e-mailers have learned permission marketing long ago. The same goes for direct mail. The age-old paradigm in direct marketing still stands ?> your list is your most valuable asset. Permission based of course.

2. But you are correct, there are many many rotten apples out there that do not adhere to DM best practices ? and hurt both the market, the consumer and the DM industry.

3. Of course, several DM tools, such as DRTV, are still intrussive. But so is every form of advertising, more or less. The simple problem is you can't grow your business quickly without a first point of contact with the consumer, and that's what advertising does for you. Not true for all businesses, but not every business in the world can be a "Purple Cow", as Seth Godin would put it.

But in essence, permission marketing has been a DM best practice for decades, perhaps even centuries. It's just that some people always like to cut corners. But that's not a DM issue, but a people issue.

Another good comment at the Search Engine Guide.

Jennifer is right. Applying DM best practices to RSS marketing is common sense. One just has to wonder why this is so often forgoten when new channels are being established as marketing tools.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.

YPN vs Adsense
David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot. Very interesting read, please check it out. Making Money with YPN

David at his blog posted an interesting findings on YPN vs Adsense. He switched to YPN from Adsense for 10 days and shared his results with a screenshot.

Very interesting read, please check it out.

Making Money with YPN

Is Amazon Missing the RSS Advertising Opportunity?

Is Amazon missing the RSS opportunity?

Yes, in almost all regards. A company of their size, financing and almost unlimited content could be the poster child for smart RSS marketing uses, but insteady they choose to almost ignore the channel.

But today I would like to touch-up especially on the RSS advertising segment, where many marketers still seem to ignore the various opportunities offered by the channel.

Even more specifically, this is about RSS advertising in RSS feeds for blogs.

What Are the Key Advertising Issues Faced by Bloggers?

• Bloggers like to keep their act clean, and in many cases that means either completely evading paid advertising or at least completely evading non-contextual paid advertising.
• Even when bloggers do decide to offer advertising, they are hard-pressed to find advertisers offering high-context advertising that would closely relate to the bloggers' content, especially their individual blog posts.
• There are still few RSS advertisers, making it difficult for many bloggers to monetize on their every post.
• However, if bloggers were to monetize their every post, the ads would need to be so highly contextual that they would not feel that they are betrying their readers.
• In essence, the ads would need to be an extension of their content, but at the same time clearly marked as third-party content.
• Following this line of though further, bloggers would prefer ads that provide real contextual value to their readers, instead of simply pushing blatant advertising messages.

Where's the Opportunity for Amazon?

Before I explore this further, please take a look at any post at MasterNewMedia. Or just click here and take a look at this one.

Robin Good is a master at taking advantage of the functionality offered by the Amazon affiliate program. Each of his posts concludes with recommended books, related to the overall topic of his in-depth articles.

For Robin's readers, these book ads are not just ads, but rather extensions of Robin's own content, giving them the opportunity to further explore the topic.

What's the opportunity for Amazon?

Create and promote a program that would make it easy for bloggers to publish contextually related book ads directly in their RSS feeds, enabling them to at least somewhat monetize each of their content items with relevant book ads.

Providing Valuable Context Advertising

But, to some bloggers providing book ads just as ads might not be contextual enough.

Now go to A9.com and do a search for "RSS marketing". In addition to displaying relevant books, the A9 search engine also displays quotes from these books.

How about if Amazon enabled bloggers to post RSS ads in their feeds, displaying a paragraph from each book that most closely matches the topic of the article, with a direct link to the page for that book on Amazon?

Or in the case of blogs about music, why not provide an automatic direct link in the ad to a 1 minute or 30 second demo of the song or group, mentioned in the blog post, which Amazon already has on their website?

Picking on Wikipedia

We all love Wikipedia, right?

Many of Wikipedia users love them so much that they constantly promote the website. So why can't the people at Wikipedia make this easier for bloggers?

For example by allowing them to automatically insert references to Wikipedia in the form of inline RSS ads, providing additional contextual content, related with the topic of the blog post?

No revenues for the blogger, but at least a good way for them to extent their content and provide more value to their readers.

Perhaps not a good RSS advertising example, but certainly one that can get you thinking about the various opportunities provided by this channel.

How Can RSS Power Your Internet Marketing and Publishing? Find out more in the most comprehensive and best guide on RSS for marketers, as acclaimed by leading RSS experts, developers, marketers and publishers. Click here and get the step-by-step guide to taking full marketing advantage of RSS.